With the development of mobile communication technology, more and more users can connect to the Internet from a mobile terminal. Through the Internet, they may search for information, communicate with friends and colleagues any time and any where, or enjoy some personalized leisure and entertainment. The Internet access through a mobile terminal has the characteristics of convenience, quickness, and accessibility at anytime and anywhere. The user can conveniently connect to the Internet as long as the user is within an area covered by the mobile phone network.
In order to protect the legitimate rights and interests of end users, when a user connects to the Internet or those websites providing personalized services through the mobile terminal, the user is required to enter the registered username and password information through the mobile terminal browser. Only after the corresponding network server authenticates and passes the access, the user is allowed to connect to the Internet through the mobile terminal.
Because the size of the existing mobile terminal is usually small, the keyboard space is limited for the user to enter the username and password, as most mobile terminals use a 12-key keyboard. But the username and password often contain letters, numbers, and symbols, as a result, a user needs to make multiple switches among the letters, numbers, and symbols to complete one input operation for the username and password. Thus, the operation is very inconvenient.
In particular, for most of current websites, in order for a user to get personalized services, the user is required to log in a website first before the user can start using the services provided by the website. Thus, the user needs to enter the username and password every time the user tries to access this website. This operation is undoubtedly a tedious process for the user. Further, connecting to the Internet through a mobile terminal has the characteristics of high frequency and short duration. Therefore, the user may be frequently required to enter the username and password multiple times a day, which is very inconvenient.
To effectively reduce the number of times that a user needs to enter the username and password when the user connects to the Internet through the mobile terminal browser, to avoid high frequency operation, and to reduce the amount of time to gain access to the Internet, existing technologies introduced a method to assist user input based on the mobile terminal using a small piece of data (Cookie).
That is, when the user registers and uses the website for the first time, the Internet website records the user login information, such as the username, ID (identification), password, visited web pages, and visit duration, etc., and saves the information in a Cookie (a small data file) in the mobile terminal browser.
When the user needs to re-enter the login page of the Internet website through the mobile terminal browser, the Internet website can obtain the user's login information by reading from the pre-stored Cookie, and verify the authentication of the uploaded information. If login information uploaded from the Cookie is verified to be authenticated, the username and password is not required, and the user can directly enter the login status. That is, the user can directly enter the browsing page of the Internet website without going through the login page.
Thus, using Cookie to store the user's login information and to assist user input can greatly alleviate the problem that a user needs to repeatedly enter the login username and password on a PC. However, in the wireless network, first, the pre-stored user information, i.e. Cookie, has to be transmitted through some intermediate equipment, such as switches and gateways etc., before it reaches the Internet website. Because of the characteristics of the wireless network, the transmitted Cookie may be filtered by intermediate devices and, as a result, the Cookie cannot reach the designated Internet website, and results in Cookie authentication failure. Therefore, the user still needs to enter the username and password through the mobile terminal browser to log in again, leading to longer user login time.
Second, due to the security restrictions, each Internet website can only be compatible with the Cookie issued by itself That is, the information in the Cookie is valid only when the Cookie is used in the same domain. For example, the Cookie information set by Internet website A is only valid on Internet website A, and can not be used in Internet website B. For different Internet websites, even if the username and password are the same, the information in the Cookie cannot be shared. Different Internet websites need separate logins. Even if most users use the same username and password in the Internet websites, they need to perform the login operation repeatedly when they log in websites for the first time. Thus, the login process is still quite tedious, and it takes more storage space when more Internet websites are visited, because each Internet website stores the information to its own Cookie corresponding to the website.
In addition, the usage of Cookie information needs to be supported by the Internet websites. If an Internet website does not support the Cookie mechanism, the mobile terminal browser cannot assist to reduce the repeated input operations by the user.